Liberation movements in Southern Africa emerged from the anti-colonial struggle as political parties in government. Since taking power they have consolidated their position in both the political arena, as well as within most, if not all, state and parastatal structures. In securing a power of definition in the political arena they are shaping – to the extent of manipulating - public discourse to suit their ends. Why have the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), to a lesser but clearly visible extent the South West African Peoples Organisation (SWAPO of Namibia) - and also to some degree the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa - not displayed a more consistent commitment to democratic principles and/or practices? Why have they also largely abandoned their once-sacrosanct goal of socio-economic transformation aimed at reducing inherited imbalances in the distribution of wealth?

In examining these issues, contributors to a just published book volume probed beyond the myths and legends, which have long surrounded southern Africa’s liberation movements. They acknowledge that while these organisations were waging war on systems of institutionalised injustice, they did not always display sensitivity to human rights issues and democratic values. The struggle for a ‘good cause’ and the noble goals associated with it did not prevent them from falling prey to authoritarian patterns of rule and undemocratic (at times violent) practices towards real or imagined dissidents within their ranks.

Even the popular support for their struggle expressed by local groups was at times based more on coercion and the manipulation of internal contradictions among the colonised than on genuine resistance to the colonial state. There were varying degrees of internal repression inside the liberation movements shaping a mindset far from liberal. This is particularly true of the Zimbabwean and Namibian cases. But some of these anti-democratic tendencies are also detectable of late in South Africa too. A recent study suggests a high degree of political intolerance among South Africans who, it seems, dislike political enemies a great deal and perceive them as threatening.

An argument presented in this volume is that the political change which has occurred in those Southern African societies shaped by settler colonialism can be characterised as a transition from controlled change to changed control. A new political elite has ascended the commanding heights. It employs selective narratives and memories relating to their liberation wars as justification of their unquestioned continuation of rule obtained. They have constructed or invented a new set of traditions to establish an exclusive post-colonial legitimacy under the sole authority of one particular agency of social forces. The (self-)mystification of the liberators has played an essential role in this fabrication of political culture and ideology.

These elites have also developed militant notions of inclusion or exclusion as key factors in shaping their postcolonial identities claimed to be collective in the sense of ‘national’. Early post-independence notions of reconciliation and slogans like ‘unity in diversity’ have given way to a politically correct identity form. Those in (political) power apply their definition along narrow ‘we-they’ or ‘with-us-against-us’ lines. Simultaneously, the boundaries between party and government are blurred and replaced by a growing equation of party and government. Opposition or dissent is increasingly considered as hostile and the dissenter sometimes branded as ‘enemy of the people’. In a University of Amsterdam doctoral thesis of 2001 on Zimbabwe it is argued that power relations had changed, but ‘perceptions of power had not changed. The layers of understanding regarding power relations, framed by socialisation and memory, continued to operate.’ The new actors executed power in relation to opposition unchanged, ‘as their mental framework remained in the colonial setting’. Hence patterns from colonial rule of ‘citizens’ ruling the ‘subjects’ were repeated and reproduced.

With this tendency towards autocratic rule and the subordination of the state to the party, a reward system of social and material favours in return for loyalty has emerged. Self-enrichment by way of a system of rent- or sinecure-capitalism has become the order of the day. The term ‘national interest’ has been appropriated and now means solely what the post-colonial ruling elite decides it means. It is used to justify all kinds of authoritarian practice while the term ‘anti-national’ or ‘unpatriotic’ is applied to any group that resists the power of the ruling elite of the day.

These selective mechanisms for the exercise and retention of post-independence power are not too dissimilar from the commandist notions that operated during the days of the liberation struggle in exile. As Rhoda Kadalie - a frustrated former ANC activist - noted: ‘Many of my former comrades have become loyal to a party rather than to principles of justice. (…) Unfortunately it is true that those who have been oppressed make the worst democrats. There are recurring patterns in the behaviour of liberation parties – when they come to power they uphold the most undemocratic practices’. A similar sobering observation by another among the disappointed was quoted in The Guardian (16 May 2001): ‘It is interesting to see who still carries their own briefcase. These are people I’ve known for years when we were in the field. Some of them are still great but some of them have become very pompous. When you have a car and a driver and you’re travelling first class, some people change.’

These examples show that outside of the inner sanctum of the political arena critical voices have emerged. They include those of some who played roles as active supporters of the liberation struggle. A new and sharper debate has emerged. It deals increasingly with the post-colonial content of liberation. As a result, it questions the validity of the concept of solidarity based on a shared past, and calls for the end of the cultivation of ‘heroic narratives’. The much-celebrated attainment of formal independence is no longer unreservedly equated with liberation, neither with the creation of lasting democracy. Now, closer scrutiny is paid to both the inherited and self-developed structural legacies, which have imposed limits to the realising of real political, cultural, social and economic alternatives in the post-colonial era.

This involves a growing recognition that armed liberation struggles operating along military lines in secret underground conditions were not suitable breeding grounds for establishing democratic systems of governance. To be successful, the forms of resistance employed in the struggle were themselves organised on hierarchical and authoritarian lines. In this sense, then, the new societies carried within them essential elements of the old system. Thus it should come as no surprise that aspects of the colonial system have reproduced themselves in the struggle for its abolition and subsequently, in the concepts of governance applied in post-colonial conditions.

There is a parallel here to Alexis de Toqueville’s celebrated retrospective on the shortcomings of the French Revolution. It reflected the frustration provoked by the restoration of old power structures under Louis Napoleon after his coup d’etat in 1851 and provides relevant insights to our southern African cases. De Toqueville argued that the French revolutionaries in the process of implementing the structures of the new system retained the mentalities, habits, even the ideas, of the old state while seeking to destroy it. And they built on the rubble of the old state to establish the foundation of the new society. To understand the revolution and its achievement, he concluded, one has to forget about the current society and instead interrogate the buried one. His conclusion was that the early freedom of the revolution had been replaced by another form of repression. Revolutionaries in the process of securing, establishing and consolidating their power bases had sacrificed the declared ideals and substantive issues they were fighting for in the name of revolution.

This process is not confined to the sphere of conscious and deliberate effort. It is also a result of particular socialisation processes. The recognition of the relationship between power, discourse and political institutions and practices has much to contribute to the study of the politics under scrutiny. The conventional approach to see domination and resistance as an oppositional pair is misleading. Resistance cannot be idealized as pure opposition to the order it opposes. Instead, it operates inside a structure of power that it both challenges and helps to sustain. Hence, the seizure of state power and control over means of production does not secure a solution alone, since a change of economic and political structures of domination and inequality requires a parallel and profound change of their nature and effects.

It is in this context that the essays in this reader just published with the South African Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) reflect on the state of the democratisation process in post-colonial Southern Africa. Case studies are not limited to Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia, but include Botswana and Lesotho also for comparative insights into similarities and differences. As the sub-title to this volume suggests, there remains much in the way of unfinished business in regard to consolidating democracy in post-colonial southern Africa. This applies not only to the political process but also to our analytic understanding of the dynamics of the process.

These essays represent a start with a grappling of the issues. The recognition that the model of liberation democracy as developed in Namibia and Zimbabwe is inherently elitist and potentially authoritarian is a significant step forward in the debate. The debate needs to go on and be further developed. Other southern African cases, most particularly Mozambique, need to be scrutinised and brought into the analysis while a critical eye needs to be kept on South Africa as it completes its first decade of democratic rule. There is still much work to undertake for the scholarly community concerned with these issues – as well as the political and grass root activists still seeking emancipation.

* Please send comments on this editorial to

* This is a shorter revised version of an Introduction to Henning Melber (ed.), Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa. The unfinished business of democratic consolidation. Cape Town: HSRC Press 2003. The just published volume is distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver (Cape Town/South Africa, [email][email protected]), in Europe from The Nordic Africa Institute (Uppsala/Sweden, [email][email protected]) and in the USA and Canada from Independent Publishers Group (Chicago/USA, [email][email protected]).
The author has been the Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek from 1992 to 2000 and is the Research Director of the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala since then. He had joined SWAPO of Namibia in 1974.

Amorkor Amarke has four children. Two of them, Emmanuel Tetteh, 7, and Nortei Tetteh, 11, are of school going age. But, instead of attending school, they spend their days either sitting at home or fishing. It's not a lack of finances that keeps these children out of the classroom and Amarke does not need the extra funds earned by their labor. Amarke desperately wants to educate her children. Why, then, are the boys not in school? The answer is simple. There is no space for them.

Several hundred Malians and Burkinabe have been forced to flee their homes in Cote d'Ivoire's cocoa-growing region of Gagnoa, 300 km west of the commercial capital, Abidjan, after a wave of arson attacks and looting. According to humanitarian sources, the attacks by groups of young men have been going on for three weeks. Witnesses say that as well as Burkinabe and Malians, Ivorian northerners and other Ivorians who had moved to Gagnoa from central Cote d’Ivoire, have also been targeted, losing crops and other property.

Yet again this week the columns of local newspapers have reported more incidences of theft and misappropriation of monies. But the increasing frequency of these occurrences unfortunately only seems to inspire silent resignation in many people.

Deputy President Jacob Zuma took a swipe at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) late last week, saying three years was a long time for it to fail to find any evidence of wrongdoing or corruption against him. The deputy president was referring to the three-year probe into allegations he was involved in corruption related to South Africa's multibillion-rand arms deal.

The European Union is failing to stop European fishers from plundering the waters of poor developing states, a leading green group said last Thursday. E.U. fisheries ministers are reviewing the cash-for-fishing deals signed with mostly African coastal states. Such agreements are vital for the E.U. fishing industry as fish stocks collapse in European waters.

There has been an increase in human rights violations associated with the return of DRC government (FAC) troops to the territory of Malemba Nkulu on 5 September 2003, reports Action Against Hunger. Malemba Nkulu Territory has been the centre of a power struggle between FAC and the MayiMayi local militia since early 2002 attributing to a precarious humanitarian situation for much of the 230,000 civilians living in this area.

Mango’s 2004 Programme of Finance Training is now available and can be viewed in full on our website at: http://www.mango.org.uk/training/calendar.asp. The 2004 programme, delivered at regional locations around the world, includes a range of one to 10-day practical courses tailored to the needs of programme and finance staff in the NGO sector. Full course details and calendar are available from our website or by contacting Barbara Johnstone at [email protected].

Three years ago a deal between the authorities of Gabon and a French logging company traded away 10,352 hectares of the Lope Reserve in return for 5,200 hectares of a previously not protected area of remote upland primary forests being added to the reserve. The highly controversial deal was arranged by officials of the US-based organization Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). In 2001, the stage moved to Congo Brazzaville. Wildlife Conservation Society announced a deal involving the Goualogo triangle, bordering the Nouabale Ndoki Park.

Environmental activist group Earthlife Africa has accused the department of minerals and energy of having a public participation process designed to "delay and distort" public engagement around the country's radioactive waste policy.

South African Justice Minister Penuell Maduna was instructed by the US government to oppose lawsuits brought in the US against multi-national corporations which allegedly benefited from apartheid, lawyer Michael Hausfeld has alleged. Professor Hausfeld told the Cape Town Press Club he had been told by Khulumani victims who attended a reparations meeting last month that Maduna had been given the instruction by US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

As Parliament readied itself for business after re-opening last week, one of the major issues that may likely generate hot debate touches on the sovereignty of the country, with the NPP Government trying to get the House to ratify a Bilateral Non-Surrender Agreement (BNSA) Ghana is said to have signed with the United States (US).

From October 24 until November 21st 2003, young women from across the globe will connect in an electronic forum to discuss strategies for integration of gender dimensions and empowerment of young women and girls at all levels of the ICT for development field. Their goals will be to identify challenges, prioritize needs for support and uncover strategies for building communities of learning, that will allow young women to begin or advance their engagement with ICTs.

The government-controlled media’s monopoly of daily news output following the banning of The Daily News and as a result of delays in issuing licences to private broadcasters continues to expose their partisan coverage of topical issues. If these media are not slavishly praising government’s policies, they are churning out selective, distorted and contradictory reports that mislead their audiences into believing the government is in control of the myriad problems bedevilling the country, says the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe.

Ethiopia's Minister of Information Bereket Simon has described the critics of the new draft press law introduced by his Ministry in April as being among other things "ridiculous" and "more Catholic than the Pope". Ato Kifle Mulat, the President of Ethiopian Free Press Journalists Association (EFJA), responded that many Ethiopian private journalists face imprisonment and fines and as a result were forced to flee the country and live in exile to "save their necks." The two were making their presentations during the opening of the International Roundtable on Media Law Reform in the Horn of Africa.

The logic of capitalism that is killing the planet continues with its growth imperative, gobbling up common sense. It enables corporations to swallow the ecological crisis and regurgitate it as a PR opportunity, and as another source of profits at the expense of communities and the Earth. And thinly veiled exploits and crocodile tears from Shell, Citi, Monsanto et. al. will not save the Planet, argues Doyle Canning, the Organising Director at the Institute for Social Ecology Biotechnology Project, in a commentary for www.zmag.org

Public Citizen's Water for All Campaign now has a 25 minute audio visual presentation on everything you ever wanted to know about water privatization. The movie exposes the major multinational water companies investing in water resources and analyzes the environmental and social impacts of water privatization, water mining and bulk water sales. It is a great educational tool for community groups, schools, libraries and anyone else who is concerned about protecting the earth's water and ensuring that clean and affordable water is available to all.

Zimbabwe's Plunge is a rare and unique book about Zimbabwe's geo-political and economic situation. The book, with consistent objectivity and the precision of a butcher's cleaver, analyses the link between finance and politics and the way these have contributed to the economic predicament in Zimbabwe. The simple and dynamic style appeals to a wide readership including politicians, economists, historians, academics, secondary school students and ordinary people who want to have knowledge about Zimbabwe's current socio economic problems and their possible solutions.

Simon's Hinds letter (Pambazuka News 129: Issues in Human Rights and Democracy in Kenya) magnifies Richard Carver's earlier assertions about the West's hypocrisy in the treatment of Robert Mugabe's leadership record. However, the bulk of his message appears to be a repeat of the many assertions that Zimbabweans can never be independent of the West or Rhodesians - which is a serious misconception of the reality of the Zimbabwean situation.

For the record: Police assaulted human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa after she had called them to report the attempted hi-jacking of her motor vehicle. Last week, three MDC personnel were shot by a local businessman - they are in hospital under police custody as the accused. Over 200 National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) members are in police custody after demonstrating for a new Constitution. Settlers in Mashonaland West held the South African High Commissioner, Jeremiah Ndou, hostage. Ndou was later summoned to Zimbabwe's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "where it was discovered that he had not been given clearance to visit the area" (State television). Fifty-three members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) were arrested before they could start protests over taxation. The unionists were released from custody after being cautioned and told that the police might press charges later. All the above events occurred in the first three weeks of October!

There is clear state collusion in all the above. The target is clear - to suppress individual and collective rights - or anything considered a threat to Mugabe's rule - yes - even elections!. To claim that the 2002 presidential elections were a true reflection of the will of the people of Zimbabwe by merely repeating the conclusions of foreign observer missions is incorrect. Simon and others may take a cue from the observations of the South African observer mission and the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) whose conclusions are quite the opposite of what they observed. The SADC parliamentary forum felt that the "electoral process could not be said to adequately comply with the Norms and Standards for Elections in the SADC region". The international community, mainly the West, has been feeding millions of starving Zimbabweans. We are only grateful. Those that have listened to the oppressed voices have only echoed them to distances far and wide. We salute them.

I am concerned that some if not most of the free condoms supplied to our clinics are imported from The People's Republic of China. The new name for the repackaged brand-named condoms distributed freely by South Africa's Department of Health, Choice, is a contradiction in terms. Most of these condoms are imported from the PRC, a country whose citizenry - and that of Tibet, which has been illegally occupied by the PRC for more than 40 years - have no choice at all over their access to fundamental human rights. It is time South Africans knew how many hundreds of our own people have lost jobs because of our government's decision to import these condoms - did they have any "choice" in the matter? If our leaders claim that unemployment, poverty and the resultant limited access to good nutrition are all the underlying factors in the spread of HIV/AIDS, then why import the condoms? Why not give our own citizens the chance to work and earn enough to live a healthier life by giving them the choice of saying "no" to imported condoms and "yes" to condoms manufactured in South Africa? It is time that the Unions, NGOs and Civil Society bring this issue to the attention of our government and claim the right to manufacture all the condoms in this country. We should not be importing condoms from a country that is still to recognise the effect HIV/AIDS will have on their own people let alone the Tibetans.

The Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) provides a specialised news and information service designed to enhance the capacity of the international community to understand, respond to and avert humanitarian emergencies. In 2002, IRIN launched its Radio project, designed to strengthen universal access to impartial news and information, especially among conflict-affected and other vulnerable populations, through a cooperative partnership with community radio stations.

The Journal includes:
* Survival of cottage industries in Africa: the case of clustering and social networks in Tanzanian garment industries by Stein Kristiansen, Andrew Mbwambo;
* Economic reforms and 'virtual democracy' in South Africa and Zimbabwe: the incompatibility of liberalisation, inclusion and development by Stefan Andreasson;
* Ethiopia-Eritrea: proxy wars and prospects of peace in the horn of Africa by John Abbink.

What is decolonization? How did decolonization transform the colonial and European metropolitan societies in the aftermath of World War II? How does the legacy of decolonization continue to affect postcolonial politics as well as cultural and intellectual life in the former European powers and ex-colonies? Assembled in The Decolonization Reader for the first time is a unique and broad set of responses to these and other important questions.

Fifty or more developing countries still depend mainly on the tropical commodities or minerals that they produce. Over the past half century, it has become abundantly clear that this has been a disaster. Peter Robbins looks into the possible solutions being proffered - from ideas to exploit new niche markets and improve quality, to more radical notions like fair trade, and shows how they all fail to measure up to the scale of the disaster facing the Third World.

Today, corruption in Zambia is a disease of endemic socio-economic and political dimensions. It is a disease that threatens the fabric of sustainable livelihoods in the country and a disease that is sustained by inappropriate and maladaptive democratic linkages between the State and its citizenry, and narrow perceptions of corruption by individuals tasked with the management of the citizenry's common good.

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is accepting applications for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Access to Learning Award for 2004. The award is given annually to a public library or similar organisation outside the United States that has shown a commitment to offering to the public free access to information technology through an existing innovative program. The award includes a grant of up to $1 million. The application can be downloaded on the CLIR Web site http://www.clir.org./fellowships/gates/gates.html.

From 7th to the 11th of June 2004, the Association for Rhetoric and Communication in Southern Africa will host its Sixth Biennial Symposium in Cape Town, South Africa. The Association invites papers and paper proposals that reflect the themes of Debate in Africa and/or the public controversies which appear at the intersection of Democracy and Science. Deadline for Proposals: 31 November 2003.

The prospect of receiving anti-retroviral therapy was brought a little closer to millions of HIV-positive Kenyans recently, with the announcement of a price reduction for some of the drugs that are used to treat AIDS. British-based pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) said last week that it would cut the price of various anti-retrovirals (ARV’s) from between 25 to 43 percent. This comes amidst an ongoing campaign by AIDS activists to lower the cost of ARV’s, which prolong the lives of people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus.

Rights campaigners in Uganda are demanding a law to protect women from domestic violence, which has been blamed for the high prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS among them. The campaigners, mostly women's groups, have argued that lack of such legislation would water down efforts to fight the pandemic.

What has freedom brought? It is almost 10 years since apartheid ended and government has published its draft review of its first decade in power to hold up a mirror to its own performance. Its reflection of the freedom years reveals a chequered pattern - good in parts; patchy in others. There are more poor households than there were in 1994 when the African National Congress (ANC) was voted in. Then, 28 percent of all households lived in poverty; that figure has now grown to over one in three households.

Nigeria's trade unions have announced that they would call for mass action to protest government's refusal to revert to the old price of fuel. They said they would resume the suspended mass protests scheduled to have started on Oct. 9, but which were called off after governors of Nigeria's 36 states hammered a deal with the trade union leaders.

Angola made one of its biggest peacetime strides on Monday as education experts set the wheels in motion to train 29,000 new teachers, with the aim of getting one million children back into the classroom.

An Ethiopian camp for Somali refugees - once the largest of its kind in the world - will close by the end of the year, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It said in a statement on Friday that the closure of Hartishek camp, located in a semiarid area near the border with Somalia – would bring to an end "one of world's most tragic refugee cases".

Conflict in Darfur, western Sudan, has displaced over half a million people since March, in addition to 70,000 who have fled across the border to eastern Chad, according to the UN. Figures remain uncertain due to access constraints and poor road conditions, but the latest estimates document at least 300,000 IDPs in northern Darfur, and 126,000 in western Darfur. In southern Darfur 76,000 have been displaced this year, on top of 200,000 who fled north from Bahr el Ghazal between 1988 and 2001.

The national university of Niger has reopened after two weeks of official closure following student demonstrations earlier this month. Officials said on Monday that classes were due to resume this week. The government unexpectedly closed Abdou Moumouni national university in the capital, Niamey, on 13 October following two days of anti-government demonstrations on 8 and 9 October.

The rise in the number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Zambia has forced the World Food Programme (WFP) to scale up its assistance programmes in some of the country's urban centres. WFP information officer Lena Savelli told IRIN on Monday that although food security in Zambia continued to improve, there was growing concern over the plight of vulnerable children, most of whom were left to support households after the death of a parent.

Burundi's Parliament has approved the power sharing agreement signed on 8 October between the transitional government and the country's largest rebel group, the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces de defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD) led by Pierre Nkurunziza, the Burundian news agency, ABP, reported.
Related Link:
* Opposition leader released
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37473

"The dichotomy of how refugees were treated in say, Guinea, versus how those from Kosovo were treated was totally unacceptable; unacceptable to spend less than US$ 20 million on 500,000 refugees from Sierra Leone and then ask for US$ 240 million for an equivalent number in Kosovo." These were words of a former US Secretary of State, complaining about double standards employed against African refugees.

Displaced people (IDPs) at Railway division camp in Lira municipality have complained about the extortion of money from them in exchange for registration and food. They told the state minister for youth and children's affairs, Felix Okot Ogong, that some people were masquerading as IDPs simply to get relief assistance. Okot advised IDPs to expose corrupt officials and warned corrupt officials to stop the practice.

The chief executive and three directors of the Daily News, an independent Zimbabwean newspaper critical of the government, turned themselves into the police on Monday and were charged for publishing without a license.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is disturbed that Senegalese authorities have refused to lift an October 6 expulsion order against Sophie Malibeaux, correspondent for Radio France Internationale (RFI). At the time, the order was temporarily reversed, but Malibeaux has again been ordered to leave the country.

Tenders are invited to establish and develop two Centres of Expertise in ICT Policy in Africa: one Centre located in and working on behalf of stakeholders in East and Southern Africa; one Centre located in and working on behalf of West and Central Africa. The Centres will play a leading role in developing the capacity of African stakeholders to contribute effectively to international decision-making on information and communications technology, products and services (ICTs) and on the role of ICTs in development; and in building multi-stakeholder national policymaking capacity in African countries.

It cost the Namibian government N$120 million in public funds to set up the infrastructure needed to chase foreign direct investment from an international company. Given this expense, the financial support that the company received was the equivalent of its salaries to its 7000 workers for almost three years. This is according to a study from the Labour Resource and Research Institute (LaRRI), which casts doubts on the benefits of foreign direct investment. Low wages, poor working conditions, everyday work accidents and verbal abuse were all par for the course at textile company Ramatex's plant in Windhoek. Rametex produces for Nike, Adidas, Puma, Otto Versand, Target, Wal-Mart and Sears Woolworth. "The experiences in Namibia are in line with international trends of Transnational Corporations (TNCs) spreading their operations globally in search for increased profits. The fact that Ramatex managed to play out three Southern African countries against each other shows how TNCs utilise their bargaining position to gain increasing concessions from host countries, which are desperate to attract investors."

The IMF recently published an Implementation Evaluation Report (IER) on the Mozambican Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (PARPA). The report emphasises that even though, broadly generalized, aggregate statistics indicate progress, the poor are inadequately served. William Butt, of the Mozambican Christian Council (CCM) contrasts the IER's findings with those of the CCM in areas such as; Good Governance, Education, Health, Agriculture and Rural Development, and Infrastructure, and his broad conclusion is that since the PARPA is heavily influenced by the IMF's policy of free-market-inspired development, so far the results seem to indicate not even a "trickle down" outcome but a "trickle around" one.

A 16-year-old child has been sentenced to cross-amputation in Sudan. You can write to the Sudanese authorities and protest the sentence.

By 2050, the percentage of the world's children who are malnourished could drop dramatically from the current 31 percent to 11 percent, if policymakers respond to the global challenge of hunger. However, rates will drop only modestly if there are serious policy or technology failures in the next half-century. These new findings are from a paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research on October 29. "We have come to a major crossroads for the world food situation. Fifty years from now, one child in four could be suffering from chronic hunger, or it could drop to one child in ten. The outcome depends on decisions made now and in the next few years," said Joachim von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and lead author of the paper.

Ken Opala from Kenya, an investigative journalist who reported on the inhumane and "horrid lives" of death row convicts, has scooped the gold medal in the 2003 Natali Prize - one of the world's leading awards for journalists. Ken Opala is also the winner of the regional prize for Africa. He and other top-class journalists from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America were honoured by the International Federation of Journalists and the European Commission at a special prize giving ceremony held at the International Press Centre Résidence Palace, in Brussels on 24 October 2003.

Two French Lawyers on Tuesday began presenting evidence in defence of a former Rwandan finance minister accused of genocide for allegedly encouraging, planning and instigating mass rapes and murders. Emmanuel Ndindabahizi, a greying 53-year-old, denies all charges of involvement in the 1994 massacres when extremist Hutus slaughtered around 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.